Internet has changed the landscape of computing environment in many ways. More conventional software applications such as e-mail word processing packages are becoming web-centric that can run on a computer without any installation. Smaller form-factor netbooks such as Intel atom processor-based devices and other thin devices based on ARM processor are becoming popular because those devices are more cost-effective and consume less power. There are some thin client devices as well that offer lock down environment. User uses those light weighted power-efficient devices for complementary uses along with their other heavy weighted desktop computers. Thin client are not yet there to replace full desktop. Users still need their desktop computers for CPU-intensive program such as video processing applications and games that need to deliver high-end graphics. With multiple devices, users eventually end up with more physical devices to meet their different use cases. Regular desktops at home are difficult to access from remote sites without paying a third party a service charge, consume a lot of power, and offer little backup disaster recovery support in the event of failure. The only way user can upgrade the system is by replacing the system.
Also, branch offices and small offices has similar need than that of a home user but in extended form where their computing needs need to be integrated into their head office or central infrastructure like data center or large service provider. Also, in case of small offices, their computing environment needs to be more elastic, expand, and scale on demand on matter of hours instead of weeks as it would take to procure new equipment.
Virtualization and cloud computing would start the next level of computing evolution. It brings a lot of computing benefit to end users, like elastic computing where more computing needs can be supported on demand. Cloud and virtualization solution typically try to centralize most of the computing needs into a data center or some locations controlled or owned by a services provider. Those kinds of centralization scale better with server-based web-centric computing. For consumer-centric computing where users need full access to a rich desktop or rich application that needs to deliver very high experience, those environments need to be created close to the users. Data-center-based computing might incur high latency to deliver high-end graphics.
It would have been nicer if users could consolidate some of their endpoints and have a better service that allow them to subscribe a computing space that offers the CPU power user needs and can scale up or down based on demand, can be accessed remotely from any point and accessible to users without needing any computer, and can be paid for just like a utility bill or bundled with ISP services. Here, we describe a new system and method to transform users' computing needs into a subscription-based services. The proposed method transforms a modem or a router into a mini-cloud virtualization host that is small enough to sit close to users' premise, at the same time work as a gate way to some central computing environment. Effectively, users get the flavor or cloud, with some experience as if needed infrastructure sits on-site or local. The mini-cloud gateway serves most of the users' computing need and access the cloud to support some needs that can't be handled with onsite resources. The system combines infrastructure, software, and digital content under the same subscription model.